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Baseball teams are handing out millions in paraphernalia.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
Byline: Aron Kahn
ST. PAUL, Minn. _ In the beginning, there were nylons.
Or so it seems. In all of baseball's religiously kept statistics, no one bothered to memorialize the first ballpark giveaway. But like archeologists musing over fossilized bones, baseball theorists believe the Milwaukee Brewers minor league club started a 60-year trend by doling out nylon stockings in the 1940s.
The bestowal of women's hosiery has succumbed, along with Halter Top Day, to gathering political forces, but the use of baseball gimmicks gets more aggressive every year as teams lure fans to the game while linking their hearts and minds with the advertisers who pay for the doodads.
Teams are handing out millions of dollars worth of caps, shirts and goofy gizmos, ranging from the now-traditional bobblehead dolls dispensed by the Minnesota Twins to coffee mugs with mug shots of arrested celebrities on them, furnished by the decidedly more irreverent St. Paul Saints minor league club.
Baseball is king of the Freebee Nation. Though all pro sports offer complimentary souvenirs now and then, the long 162-game season played by major league teams seems to call for more value-added benefits, as they say ...
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